But beyond being upset with the expense and disorder that weekend, many Torontonians (and city council) sided with the police, assuming that the arrest of 1,105 people must have somehow been justified, given the rampage of a small group through the downtown core.

What is now unmistakably clear — with the release of a searing report by Ontario Ombudsman André Marin and startling new video evidence of police beatings obtained by the Star’s Rosie DiManno — is that the vast powers of the state were unjustifiably used against thousands of innocent protesters, as well as against others doing nothing more subversive than riding a bike or picking up groceries.

Unbeknownst to citizens who had gathered for a peaceful march through downtown Toronto — similar to marches frequently held without incident in the city — the provincial cabinet had resurrected police powers from the 70-year-old Public Works Protection Act, enacted when the country was at war with Nazi Germany.

This, according to Marin, triggered "extravagant police authority" which the police went on to exercise outside the intended area, leaving citizens vulnerable to arbitrary arrest and detention far from the G20, and creating "the most massive compromise of civil liberties in Canadian history."

If one were trying to dream up scenarios of overarching police powers, it would be hard to invent anything more lurid than the real-life tale of police yanking the prosthetic leg off 57-year-old Revenue Canada employee John Pruyn, after he was unable to move quickly enough from the designated Queen's Park "speech area" where he was sitting with his daughter.

The war measures powers only compounded the problem created by the massive police presence assembled by the federal government. Harry Glasbeek, professor emeritus at Osgoode Hall Law School, notes that, with almost 20,000 police to monitor some 10,000 demonstrators, there were two "guardians of the peace" for every unarmed demonstrator.

All this not only alerts us to the dangers of creeping authoritarianism, but amounts to a vindication of the demonstrators, who were often dismissed as troublemakers.

On the contrary, we need more these sorts of citizens, who take seriously the notion that dissent is essential to freedom, because it keeps political leaders in check.

Indeed, while police were arresting the one-legged man on the lawn at Queen’s Park, a few kilometres away the G20 leaders were quietly scrapping a proposed tax on financial speculation, promoting an agenda of austerity, and generally assuring that the horrendous costs of the financial crisis would be paid for by the world’s citizens — not by the banks that brought it on.

The important role of protesters — so well appreciated by iconic Western thinkers like John Stuart Mill — is denigrated these days, perhaps because it fits uneasily with our society’s narrative about everyone being driven purely by greed and self-interest.

We seem to have trouble understanding people willing to spend hours marching in protests without the slightest prospect of personal gain, just a commitment to justice.

Instead, oddly, we accept as normal governments that squander $1 billion on "security," turning the country’s largest city into a pseudo war zone and locking up hundreds of its finest citizens.

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Torontonians were effectively placed under martial law during the G20 Summit, says Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin.

The provincial government’s decision to secretly invoke an obscure 1939 war measures law to give police extreme powers to detain, search and arrest people was likely unconstitutional and unnecessary, Marin says in his report, Caught in the Act, which was released Tuesday.

Toronto Police also went beyond the unusual powers granted by the Public Works Protection Act regulation, using it inappropriately to stop and search possibly thousands of citizen across the downtown core in violation of their Charter rights, he said.

“For the citizens of Toronto, the days up to and including the weekend of the G20 will live in infamy as a time period where martial law set in the City of Toronto leading to the most massive compromise of civil liberties in Canadian history,” Marin said. “And we can never let that happen again.”

. . .

“Regulation 233’s ground zero was in Chief Blair’s office. No other police agency wanted anything to do with this police regulation,” he said.

...

Marin said he got “zero cooperation” from the police chief who said no to interviews on behalf of himself and his officers.

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There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.Howard Zinn